Never easy: cell phone edition

I was abroad twice last week, Belgium with my sis and Switzerland for work. Both times I experienced serious mobile phone failure, which is silly since I have been the most ridiculous mobile consumer: one US phone (on monthly contract), one UK phone (on pay as you go) and one UK smartphone (on work contract). I decided this was all silly and that I needed to consolidate. The simple truth is that enough trips to interesting places had led me to believe that I needed at least two mobile phones to guarantee that one would work wherever I was. My UK pay-as-you-go phone had not worked in Singapore and I was roaming on my US phone. My work Blackberry had miraculously shut off its reception in Belgium and I was roaming on my UK pay-as-you-go phone. I was tired of having so many digits and so many options. So I broke down yesterday and assumed a full Mac-geek status by buying an iPhone. The thing is not yet fully functional for many reasons: I am trying to get my UK pay-as-you-go number transferred, and I assume this will take more time. So far the “activation” process has been hampered by (1) my living in the UK less than 3 years, requiring me to pay a £200 deposit to get the thing, and (2) some snafu at O2 that I still don’t get but when I stopped by there this morning, they were much aware of, compounded by (3) Barclaycard’s fraud department getting suspicious that I had charged both a £200 deposit and £99 for the phone in the same day. After two times dealing with Barclaycard, including realizing that for some strange reason they had my birthday “in their system” off by two full years, the phone went live about noon today, but the number is random and not the one that I had so handily put in the PAC code transfer request for. I had yet another call from their Fraud department today, at which point I just pretended that my birth month and year were what I had been told was erroneously in the system. It’s all a mystery to me. Hopefully soon the new phone will be active, and I–as a 2.5 year resident in the UK–will finally close the door on my US cell phone account, which I have kept to this point in the case that I would wind up there again and wish for the number. Perhaps I’m settling in in the UK after all.